How to Install Hytale Mods from CurseForge

CurseForge is the primary place Hytale mods get published – it's where most community creators put their work, where the big mod packs live, and where you'll end up browsing nine times out of ten when you're looking for something new. This guide covers the practical workflow for finding mods on CurseForge and getting them onto a Hytale dedicated server.

If you're after a general mods overview (all formats, all sources, not just CurseForge), the mods, assets and plugins guide covers the wider picture. This one is the CurseForge-specific walkthrough.

Note: Hytale is in Early Access and the modding ecosystem is moving fast. Always back up your server before installing anything, and expect some mods to break after game updates until authors catch up.

What CurseForge actually is (and isn't)

CurseForge is a mod discovery and distribution platform run by Overwolf. It hosts:

• A browseable catalogue of community-created Hytale mods
• Version history and changelogs for each mod
• Download counts and last-updated dates (useful signals for figuring out what's alive)
• Mod author pages and support links

What it is not, on Hytale specifically, is a one-click-install-from-your-server-panel integration. You'll see some guides (usually AI-generated) claim LOW.MS or other hosts have a "Curse Mods" browser built into the control panel that lets you search and install CurseForge mods from inside the panel. As of April 2026 that doesn't exist for Hytale – not on LOW.MS, and as far as I can tell, not on any host. You download from CurseForge in your browser, then upload the file to your server. It's one extra step and it's fine.

Step 1: Find a mod on CurseForge

1. Go to curseforge.com.
2. Pick Hytale from the games list. If Hytale isn't showing as a category yet on the version of CurseForge you're seeing, search for "Hytale" directly.
3. Browse by category – usually Mods, Asset Packs, or Server Plugins – or sort by Downloads / Last Updated.

Signals I'd look at before installing:

• Last updated. A mod that hasn't been touched in months during Early Access is a yellow flag. The game's still changing too fast for stale mods to work reliably.
• Download count. Not everything, but a decent proxy for whether other people have actually got it working.
• Open issues on the author's support page, if they link one. If the issue tracker is full of "server crashes on startup" reports, keep scrolling.
• Server vs client requirements. Some mods only work on one side; make sure the one you're grabbing is server-compatible.

Click the download button on the mod page and save the file to your PC. It'll usually be a .zip or .jar.

Step 2: Back up your server

If you've got automated Cloud Backups running on LOW.MS, take a fresh one now by clicking Cloud Backup in the control panel. Self-hosting, copy the whole server directory somewhere safe. This is a five-second step and it saves you every time something goes wrong.

Step 3: Stop the server

Mods are picked up on startup, and dropping files into mods/ while the server is running is a recipe for inconsistent state. Click Stop in the control panel (or /stop in the console if you're self-hosting) and wait for it to shut down cleanly.

Step 4: Upload the mod file to mods/

The mods/ folder is at the root of your server directory, alongside HytaleServer.jar, Assets.zip, and the config JSON files. Whatever you downloaded from CurseForge goes in there as-is – don't unzip the file unless the mod's own install notes explicitly say to.

On LOW.MS you've got two ways in:

• File Manager in the control panel. Navigate to mods/, click Upload, pick the file. Done in a few seconds.
• SFTP, using the credentials shown at the top of the panel. Useful if you're installing a lot of mods at once or you want to drag-and-drop from a desktop SFTP client.

On a self-hosted server, either copy the file in with your OS file manager or drop it via SSH/SCP.

If the mod has dependencies

A lot of mods on CurseForge depend on other mods – usually a library or API mod the author builds against. The mod's CurseForge page will list its dependencies if any. Download and upload each dependency the same way. Getting this wrong is the most common reason a mod fails to load: the mod needs library X, library X isn't present, and the mod silently doesn't load (or crashes the server on startup).

Step 5: Start the server and verify

Start the server from the control panel, then open Web Console and watch the startup output. You're looking for:

• Mod load confirmations – usually something like "Loaded mod: " or "Initialised ".
• Version warnings – some mods will log that they were built against a different Hytale version.
• Stack traces / crash output – if the server doesn't come up at all, the most recently added mod is the first suspect.

If everything looks clean, join the server from the Hytale client and confirm the mod is actually doing what it's supposed to do in-game.

Where this differs from the general mod guide

This guide is CurseForge-specific. The general mods, assets and plugins guide covers a wider set of cases:

• Mods downloaded from author websites rather than CurseForge
• The difference between mods, asset packs, and plugins (short version: they all go in mods/)
• Troubleshooting mods that were installed but aren't loading
• Removing mods that have added content to a populated world

If you're doing basic CurseForge installs, this page is enough. If something weird is going on, start with the general guide.

Server-side, client-side, and "both"

Not all mods work the same way, and this trips people up when they come from other moddable games:

• Server-side mods run only on the server. Players don't need to install anything on their end – they just join. Admin tools, gameplay tweaks, economy mods, and server utilities tend to be in this category.
• Client-side mods run only on the player's client. These don't need to go on the server at all. UI tweaks, custom textures, rebind tools, and similar all usually live here.
• "Both" mods need to be on the server and on the client – usually anything that adds new items, blocks, entities, or mechanics. The server handles the logic and the client handles the rendering, so both sides need the same mod files.

Hytale's server-to-client mod delivery handles the "both" case nicely – when you install a "both" mod on the server, players auto-receive the content when they connect, no manual client install required. The CurseForge page for each mod should tell you which category it's in; if it doesn't, err on the side of installing server-only and see if it works.

Updating CurseForge mods

Mods get updated. Sometimes for new features, sometimes for compatibility with a new Hytale patch.

1. Stop the server.
2. Delete the old mod file from mods/.
3. Download the new version from CurseForge.
4. Upload it to mods/.
5. Start the server and watch the console for clean loading.

Take a backup before updating a mod that's added content to your world – the same "removing a mod with custom content can cause issues" warning applies when you're upgrading to an incompatible version.

Removing CurseForge mods

Same flow as updating, but without the re-upload step:

1. Stop the server.
2. Delete the mod file from mods/.
3. Start the server.

If the mod added custom content (new blocks, items, entities) to your world, some of that content may show up as missing-block errors in the logs. Some mods handle graceful removal; some don't. Back up before you remove anything that's been part of a populated world for a while.

Troubleshooting

Mod doesn't load after upload

• Confirm the file is directly in mods/ and not in a nested subfolder.
• Confirm you uploaded the .zip / .jar as-is, not an extracted folder.
• Check logs/ for error output naming the mod.
• Re-download from CurseForge in case the first download was corrupted.

Server won't start after adding a mod

• Remove the most recently added mod and try again.
• If it starts cleanly, that mod was the problem – check its dependencies, its required Hytale version, and any compatibility notes on the CurseForge page.
• If it still doesn't start, the issue is probably somewhere else (config, Java version, disk space) rather than the mod itself.

Mod loads but doesn't do anything in-game

• Check if it needs a matching client-side install (see the "Both" category above).
• Look for a config file the mod generated under config/ – a lot of mods ship defaults tuned for singleplayer that you'll want to adjust for a multiplayer server.
• Join the server and check the in-game console or commands the mod documents on its CurseForge page.

Mod works in singleplayer but not on a dedicated server

Some mods don't support dedicated servers yet, or have separate server/client builds. The mod's CurseForge page should call this out; if it doesn't and the mod simply doesn't run on the server, reach out to the mod author on their support page.

Best practices

1. Always back up before installing a mod. Every single time. It takes a few seconds and it has saved me more servers than I can count.
2. Install mods one at a time while you're setting up a pack. If something breaks, you know exactly which mod caused it.
3. Read the CurseForge description. Install requirements, dependencies, and known issues are usually listed; skipping this is the fastest way to waste an evening.
4. Keep an eye on dates. A mod last updated in January for an Early Access game that's had three patches since then is a coin flip – sometimes it still works, often it doesn't.
5. Don't install 20 mods on your first night. Build up gradually, let your community play with each addition, and remove anything that causes problems rather than letting them pile up.